SIR, - 1 should be grateful if you would allow me to
comment on Mr. t.clinger's letter (Spectator, July 20) which I feel should not remain unanswered. For someone who claims to have • been in Malaya during the war there, he displays a surprising lack of understanding of the issues involved.
'After a ten-year war . . . we had to give Malaya independence after all,' writes Mr. Edinger. To him the Malayan Emergency was just another 'colonial' war which we lost' because our troops were 'so demoralised' that some of them resorted to torture, and because of our failure to negotiate 'terms' early enough to avoid 'political disaster.'
The long campaign in Malaya was fought not against the people in art attempt to maintain British colonial rule, as Mr. Edinger implies, but against a comparatively small Communist army (estimated to number 10,000 men in the early days). This force, presumptuously calling itself the Malayan Races Liberation Army, was in no way representative of the majority of Malays and Chinese, whose soldiers and police assisted the British and Commonwealth troops in the slow but steady reduction of its numbers and influence in a
country already moving towards independence. When independence came, it was negotiated peace- fully with the Malayan authorities and not surren- dered after years of fighting to the few disillusioned and ill-fed Communist bandits still remaining in the jungle in 1957.
As far as the use of torture by the Army is concerned, all I can say is that during my service as an infantry officer in Malaya I neither saw nor heard of any instance of it. Further, I saw no 'panicky' troops in or out of uniform, with or without arms.
Finally, I should in fairness admit that I agree with Mr. Edinger that we sometimes disliked some of the 'white specimens' we were 'called upon to defend.' However, this dislike did not produce panic in us but only anger and frustration that some supposedly responsible people could attach so much importance to their weekend bathing-parties and take so little trouble to understand what the jungle war was really about.
J. E. MARTYN
40 Cadogan Square, SW!
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